REPORT: 95%
of Bay Area Endangered Species Listings Prompted by Citizen Actions

Bush Suspension of Citizen
Oversight Could Spell Extinction of Dozens of Species

The Center for Biological
Diversity released a report
today demonstrating the devastating impact George W. Bush's proposal to
eliminate citizen oversight from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) would
have on imperiled San Francisco Bay Area plants and animals. Citizen Oversight
and the Endangered Species Listing Program shows that citizen petitions
and litigation are responsible for 95% of all Endangered Species Act listings
in the Bay Area in the past decade. Without citizen involvement, few species
would be listed and the extinction rate would be enormous.

"The Bush administration
is attacking citizen participation because citizen involvement works,
and the administration's industry backers want the ESA to fail,"
said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center. "The Bush
administration has rolled back one environmental regulation after another,
but this is the worst yet. It not only targets endangered species, it
closes the door on participatory democracy."

The Bush administration
is attempting to add a rider to the 2002 Interior Appropriations Bill
that would abolish the rights of citizens to participate in the ESA listing
process. The rider would, among other things, remove mandatory timelines
to determine the merits of citizen-initiated petitions, eliminate mandatory
timelines to complete government-initiated listings, and prevent citizens
from upholding those timelines. Secretary of Interior Norton would be
given sole discretion to decide whether or not to initiate, and whether
or not to complete the listing process for imperiled species.

Mandatory listing
timelines and the ability of citizens to enforce them were not in the
original ESA as passed in 1973. Congress amended the ESA in 1982 to add
these provisions
in order to end, in Congress' words, "the foot dragging of a delinquent
agency." At the time, there was a backlog of over 3,000 imperiled
species waiting for protection under the ESA.

Yet even after the
amendments were passed, the Fish and Wildlife Service ignored its duty
to list species, failing to make headway into the backlog of listed species.
In the Bay Area, no species were listed from 1981 through the middle of
1985, and from 1985 through 1988, the agency maintained a low, steady
listing rate of two species per year. According to federal auditors, over
34 species went extinct between 1980 and 1990 while waiting for protection
under the ESA.

Once citizen involvement
began in earnest, the ESA started working. In the Bay Area, the number
of species protected by the ESA increased 448% in the last ten years compared
to the prior 17 years, when citizen involvement was limited. In a testament
to the effectiveness of the ESA, none of the Bay Area species that were
fortunate enough to be protected have gone extinct. "The mandatory
timelines coupled with citizen enforcement have been the savior for dozens
of the Bay Area's most imperiled species, but dozens more still desperately
need protection," said Brent Plater, an attorney at CBD. "If
the Bush administration repeals these provisions, Bay Area species such
as the California Tiger Salamander, the San Francisco Bay Spineflower,
the Suisun Song Sparrow, and the Foothill Yellow-Legged Frog are likely
to go extinct before the Bush administration lifts a finger to protect
them."

The CBD report catalogs
the delinquency of the listing process, and the importance citizen involvement
has played in providing much needed protection for species that have no
time to lose. Some of the findings include:

Despite a federal
requirement to list imperiled species within two years, Bay Area listings
took 15 years on average, with 51% taking at least 20 years.

The average time
between a Bay Area species being designated a high listing priority
and its actual listing was 13 years, with 64% taking at least 15 years.

When citizens
intervened, however, these same species were listed within two years.

The report provides
a county by county list of all 83 threatened and endangered species in
the nine county Bay Area, the listing history of each, graphs showing
Bay Area listing trends since the ESA was enacted in 1973, and lists of
imperiled species threatened with extinction by the Bush's proposed rider.